Transcripts For CSPAN Politics Public Policy Today 20130312

Her mothers folks are from virginia and probably her fathers as well. John converts to quakerism and they go off and live in North Carolina in a quaker community. As far as we know dolley was born there so she is North Carolinas only first lady. What is sad about that she spends most of her life denying it. We think it has to do with her fathers shady Business Practices and they move back to virginia. So shes raised in the world of slave holding. Her father released his slaves as a quaker. Is that the cause of his inability to continue his business . I think he had other problems besides that. He couldnt farm so they moved to that chilly Northern City of philadelphia. Im not sure if you know so much about her thoughts of slavery. How is it that she reconciled herself to actually having slaves in the white house . I think thats a good question. Im not sure i know the answer to that. But she did not free any of her slaves as her father had. And she didnt speak out against slavery so the quaker background there did not effect her slave holding. This is why historians have a hard job. Its a real dichotomy. Her father frees slaves and go to philadelphia. For ten years things are terrible for the pains in philadelphia. Children die. Her mother has to open up a boarding house. Shes pushed into marrying john todd. She has two children, one of them dies. Then shes this beautiful 25 yearold widow. And you could argue she could have had her pick of any man but she picks James Madison. Turns out to be a great pick. But why does she do that . Its one of those moments she said i could go back to the world i lived in but we dont have anything from her at the. What we do know is by the time shes a woman in middle age and old she has exactly the same kind of attitude toward enslaved americans that southerners had which is the inability to understand them as humans. When James Madison dies and doesnt free slaves, everyone begins to blame dolley. Part of that is fine because she starts selling slaves as soon as she can. What about her quaker roots affected the kind of woman she became if this aspect did not i think were back to the empathy thing. The peacemaking. The idea you dont make war. Do we know if she counseled her husband against going to war since quakers dont believe in fighting wars. We dont know. If you read her letters shes as partisan as anybody. She has the white house defensiveness. I think she probably supported him 100 in what he decided to do but her own nature was always to conciliate. How did dolley feel about womens education . What we know about her was she was a very well educated woman for her day, any class. Were not sure how she got there because she was a southerner and southerners did not educate their girls. We know from her handwriting that she was very well educated. She never had a daughter so we dont know what she would have done but im sure she would have given her daughter a good education. The quakers believed in educating women as well as men so she benefited from that. She takes that background with her into the first ladies role. What qualities did she see in James Madison when he was so much her opposite . Well, i think on sits attract many times. I think she was very impressed with his intellect understand private he was thought to be very amusing and very entertaining. And so i think thats the side of him that she saw while they were courting. And its interesting that aaron burr provided the link between the two. You get the sense of these people who were part of the american cannon were a small community. Its a small world. And James Madison fell in love with her and was very romantic. He was in his mid 40s and had never married which was odd. Marriage is a very pragmatic business in this age and love isnt necessarily part of it. So dolleys approach to the marriage was pragmatic. He would be a protector of her son. As the marriage went on she fell deeply in love with james. Marriage was a pragmatic business and she had a son to protect and property to be managed. And someone who would do that honestly and well. And had a reputation for running his own Family Plantation in virginia. Rick is up next in kansas. Hello. Good evening. You ladies are good. Thanks, rick. Two questions if you would. First, did ms. Madison travel abroad, if , so when and who did she visit . And among modern time first ladies who might she compare with . Did Dolley Madison travel abroad . I dont think she ever travel add broad. Diplomats were amazed by that because she was so converse nt and she was a diplomatic wife so they did marvel that she had that quality. And how did she get her knowledge of french fashions for example . If you were Dolley Madison, you could not go anywhere whether it was a city in america or france without having to shop for her. Also very early on she became the patriot jay of the french ministers wife and she schooled her as well. She hired a master of ceremonies in the white house who was french and familiar with all of the diplomatic niceties shall we say so that he would explain to her what kind of food was served and what the french taste was and what french qui sin was about so she had a number of people who helped school her in this type of thing. The white house staff is large d all of this come from the money that they were paid or from their personal wealth, all these extra staff and advisors that you talk about . Probably most of them did. For instance, one of the things she hired as they called him french john away from the minister from Great Britain which was a huge slap tofment hire somebody away from somebody elses household particularly when that person was in the Diplomatic Community was an insult on the one hand or a great coo on the other. And she was able to do that. A lot of resources went to creating the out fits. She got the bills and she was like dont tell my husband. Between buying the stuff and paying the duties on it, it was quite a lot. I wanted to ask you about the maryland component of this fleeing of the white house during the war. My understanding is that there is a house in brookville maryland that is called white house for a day and my understanding is that madison arrived at that house and conducted business from there and i wondered whether Dolley Madison was part of that or whether there was some kind of a transition from virginia to maryland . I do not know the answer to that question. That gives us another stop in this. Stump the panel. Another place to check out, the white house for a day you tell us about. I was going to go back and answer or give my opinion about the second part of the question was who would she compare to in the present. And i would say Jacqueline Kennedy. I think she looked at imagining her Husbands Administration and recreating the white house for the stage for diplomacy through her renovation of the white house in the same way dolley looked at the white house as a stage and imagined her husbands presidency. So i see a lot of comparable activity and things that she was trying to achieve as was Jacqueline Kennedy. And Jacqueline Kennedy referenced dolley. She was a fan and definitely referenced her in the re dog of the white house. And she had to love the french furniture. With regard to the renovation of the white house, if you go to the white house today, can you see evidence of the torching by the british . There are places in the basement where you can see burned timbers. I know when they did the restoration of the white house, they found a lot of charred wood and charred bricks and so forth that were taken out and saved as remnants from the fire. Were showing some pictures of some of the charring right now. You can see it on the trim of the balcony too. Laura bush told me president bush showed the prime minister. How complete it was destruction . Pretty complete inside. How long did it take to rebuild it . The mad sons didnt move back in. It wasnt until the monroes administration that they were able to move back in the white house so i would say a couple of years. About 18 minutes and its time to move. A complex part of our history and long life to the retirement after the madison administration. James and dolley return to their beloved montpelier in virginia and were going to visit that place next. If you were a visitor you would enter here and be shown into the madisons great drawing room. Mrs. Madison had many lady friends she would invite here. The daughters of Thomas Jefferson were also frequent visitors. Her most intimate circle included her families, her sisters especially were always welcome guests as well as many nieces she had who often stayed for extended visits here. The drawing room combined many different themes into one. You see many of the faces of the Great American statesman, but you see figures of classical antiquity. You have a reproduction of the declaration of independence. Have you a miniature of homer, the writer of the great epics of grease. Then you have a painting of pan and youths. This was 200 years old when they purchased it. In the way of blending the classical and american they were trying to place the events in world history. This is a room where all the guests would assemble before dinner and have a chance to meet one another and converse socially and casually and then they might be invited to dine in the dining room. After supper the ladies would adjourn back into the drawing room and maybe play a game and be served coffee and tea. This was a social center of the house. If you were a part of the intimate circle of friend you would be invited into the dining room from the drawing room. Here Dolley Madison in an unusual setting for the period would is it at the head of the table and her husband would is it at the middle of the table. Dolley would direct the conversation and james could engage in conversation with the people to his right or left. This table today is set for eight people but there could be as many people as 20 served in the dining room. That would not be unusual. She considered dining here to be more relaxing than entertaining in washington. She was less worried serving 100 people here than 20 in washington. Many important figures would be seated with them. Thomas jefferson was frequently here. James monroe was here. Henry clay. Margaret smith. Once while mrs. Madison was serving at the head of the table the Vice President offered to do the honors for her and she responded oh no, watch with what ease i do it. And he had to admit she did it with unparalleled ease. And looking at their life when they returned there, how was it compared to when they lived in the white house . I think they were besieged by people who wanted to associate themselves with the mad sons. Many visitors in addition to political visitors in addition to family and friend. Sort of like the washingtons and the jeffersons. Everybody wanted to meet the great percentages. So they had people in the house with them. Not only relatives but Many Political visitors as well. She was devoted to him and getting his papers together in that role. Was she happy doing that . Yes, that the point she loved her husband very much. That is where he wanted to stay and so she stayed as well. The descriptions of her at this time werent the same. Shes described as content, adam and eve in paradise. She definitely missed washington. She would write and say tell me all the news and she would complain a little bit i havent been out. Keep me up to date and let me know what is happening. For her own selfshe probably would have wanted to go back to washington for a visit but James Madison was going to stay put. She was 49 years old when she left the white house. He was 17 years her senior. She worked to involve him when he was in the last days of his final illness. Before we talk about her years back in washington because she lived until the age of 81 and was very much involved in the august. I have a couple of comments about Dolley Madisons clothing and fashion and then i have a question. I used to be a dozen at the North Carolina Historical Museum and we happen to have some of her belongings which includes the original of that red velvet dress we saw. Also we own a pink silk dress she wore while she was first lady. And what was interesting about that piece of clothing was when we had it conserved by the people of williamsburg virginia. They found that the tiny but tons on the front of the dress were filled with dried peas. So thats what her dress maker did for her with french fashion also as she grew older and her hair became very very thin, she did have some real human hair curls sewed into her turbins and put that on in the morning with her curls showing and she looked younger she thought. The way the greensboro Historical Museum came into possession of these wonderful items including beautiful silk shoes and carved ivory calling cases is they received it from some folks who brought a trunk at auction that was sort of a hidden treasure. And i want to know what these ladies know about the finding of that trunk that was hidden behind a wall. And i want to say it was in philadelphia. But i want to know how the person that had that hidden behind the wall got those very important things and had them . Ill answer quickly because i want to say this is happening in the 1950s and 1960s so not that long ago. The story of Ladies Historical Society found and financed this deserves a Television Program of its own. They raised money one Chicken Dinner at a time paid the sum of 25,000 to get this stuff. Is that close to where she was born s. That where the connection was . The ladies felt like she was North Carolinas only born first lady. You can go there now and see part of that. Dolley madison returns to washington after the death of her beloved james. How does she spend her years here . She become it is grand am of Washington Society once again. Because people know about her poverty but dont want to confront her with it, people in the white house, the tylers invite her to come to dinner on many occasions. The younger first ladies always ask her advice on entertaining and handling large crowd of people. So she becomes sort of an ex first lady advisor. And thats how she happened to do the match making between angel casington and van buren the son. Shes in the mix again and very much a behind the scenes player again. This is not a tragic ending. She manages to live a well known involved life. I think it was lonely without james. Eventually she sold. You remember this is her town. She worked for 16 years to build this town and the president s mansion as a symbol. It was under her tenure that the president s mansion got a nickname the white house. She can be credited with the nationalism around the end of the war of 1812. When she comes back to washington it is like the past came to light. She wore many of the same clothes. She was poor. But of coursed the this expect of making her seem like a relic from an rare was that her real name . It was indeed. Though again her niece tried to perpetuate this idea that she was named dorothy. But she was dolley and trying to figure out why her family tried back to the scandalous rumors about her sex al fair with Thomas Jefferson and they thought that was too common a name for her but she was dolley and her birth is recorded that way. With or without the e. You see it spelled sometimes without. Thats advertising. Now the icon. John is in pennsylvania. Yes i was wondering if Dolley Madisons first husband john todd was related to abraham lincolns wife mayor todd. I have no idea. Im going to say what is important about that is marry todd brooded that about. When mary todd comes to down decade later and Dolley Madison set the example. Mary todd tries to ride on her coat tails. But she does not have dolleys sense of tone. Shes tone death when it comes to that. Is it true dolleys son from her first marriage gambled away much of her money . That and drinking. That will do it. Yes. Did he continue his relationship with his mother in later years . No she did not. Your question about Dolley Madison . Im questioning whats the relationship between ms. Madison and ms. Polk and harrison. And harrison. I think the polks became friend. People wanted to associate themselves with dolley after she came back to the capitol city and it was cash shea by association so the polks often invited her to dine with them and take part in parties and so forth in the we should tell people about congress awarding her a seat. I call this her iconic phase when she becomes a symbol. Shes awarded a seat on the floor of congress with escorts. Shes the only woman to do it and for a woman to do it. There is a lot of attention being paid to her and she starts to become a symbol even as shes living. Did she avail herself in the debates 234 congress . One of the things she did for other women is that she would go to the debates and go and watch the Supreme Court argue and that allowed other women to do that as well. That was a way of bringing the women into a knowledge of what was going on politically so while they were part of this social network that she was setting up in washington, they could also be part of the Political Networks as well. She would get the women together and they would go up to capitol hill. She called them dove parties. Debbie on facebook didnt Paul Jennings give her money at the end of her life when she was so poor . Money and groceries, yes. You spoke about how she was writing a letter to her sister in the midst of evacuating the white house. How did it get posted or did she hold on to it . We only have this letter in her fair hand. So in 1830s when shes thinking about her legacy. She wants stuff from Dolley Madison. Shes caution. And she mentioned this letter, we dont have the original. We have a caller which Margaret Smith reproduces. There is an art cal that suggest that dolley may have at heard the for his sake. Thats a good pr move. Pam, youre our last caller. I wanted to ask whether Dolley Madison had any kind of relationship with James Monroes wife who i know travelled in europe and i believe was born in england and whether she had any grandchildren through her son . Thank you very much. That helps us set the stage for a future conversation d. They have a relationship . Not terribly much new york city. They knew each other as plantation owners in the same area but they were not friendly and there were no children. We would say no legitimate issue as they would say. As we close here, here is a quote from Dolley Madison, we all have a hand in the formation of our own destiny. We must press on that intricate path leading to perfection and happiness by doing all that is good and hand some before we can be taken under the silver wing of that angel. Shes important for several reasons which she does set the role of first lady. For historians we look at her and she lets us know the role of aristocracy in this great democracy, why does this matter . And i think for Dolley Madison what shes offered us a model of governance that stresses civility and empathy. Shes modeling this for us. Shes not going to win. We need examples and role models and her way of conducting politics, stressing building bridges and not bunkers is a model we can use for the future. Important shes very as katherine says for bringing those models but also for bringing women into the political mix at a very early time period. And her conciliation or her abilities to bring people together. Wouldnt it be nice if we had her back in washington now. We only skimmed the surface in 90 minutes of 81 entering years of life. If you want to learn more. I thank the White House Historical association for their help in this series. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2013] next monday night first Lady Elizabeth monroe was more private than Dolley Madison. She refused to continue the tradition of making social calls around the city. She spoke french inside the white house and gained a reputation of being queenly by her critics. And Louisa Katherine adams was the only first lady born outside the u. S. Next monday live at 9 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan and cspan 3, also on cspan radio and cspan. Org. And our website has more about the first ladies including a welcome to the white house. The association is offing the book first ladies of the United States of america. And thoughts from Michelle Obama on the role of first ladies throughout history now available for the discounted price of 12. 95 plus shipping at cspan. Org products. Senator carl levin announced last week that he will not seek reelection. Today the majority leader harry reid spoke about the michigan democrat who chairs the Senate Armed Services committee. Shutdown to derail its progress. Mr. President , for some public servants, the political fires lit by their first trip to washington, whereby being moved bay Memorable Party convention speech. For others, the history of military service leads to a career in Public Service. For still others, a single issue such as a vibrant community propels them into community. For senator carl levin, serving michigan families is something a family business. His father worked as a corrections commissioner. His uncle theodore was chief judge for the District Court in the Eastern District of michigan for many, many years. I was elected to congress in 1982, the same year that senator levins brother, sander, was elected to the house of representatives. He has been Ranking Member of the house ways and means committee. Hes a distinguished member of the house of represeatives, having served that body for going on 31 years. Mr. President , the first time i met carl levin was over here when i was in the house, going to run for the senate. We met in his office and the first thing he said as i came to washington a few years ago, he said, hes my brother but also my best friend. Mr. President , how about that . Thats something i have never ever forgoen. These two brothers, nativesf detroit, have done much for the state of michigan. Carl levin is truly an outstanding senator and even a better man. The senior senator from michigan is the longestserving senator in its states history. He dedicated his life to michigan families before elected to the senate. He served as general counsel to the Civil Rights Commission and assistt attorney general to the state commission. He served two terms in the detroit city counsel, one as president of the city cowan sefplt as a senator, senator levin consistently advocated for michigan families, whether that meant supporting the auto industry, protecting lake michigan, Holding Credit Card Companies Accountable or securing funding for our sons and daughters serving in the military. As chairman of the Armed Services committee, carl levin is the nations most respected voice on National Security and the most powerful advocate for men and women of the United States armed forces. As chairman of the Permanent Senate committee on investigations, he sought the truth on behalf of American Families time and time again. Hes led investigations for the 2008 financial crisis, abusive Credit Practices and abusive credit card practices and a long extensive, extremely enlightening bit of work on the enron collapse. His dedication to the senate, is matched only by his dedication to his own family. He and his lovely wife barbara have been married for more than 50 years. They have three daughters and six grandchildren. Im confident carl is looking to spending more time with these grandchildren, taking long walks through his his and sandys tree farm. Its a wonderful place they go. They dont harvestnything. Its just a bunch of trees. And they love that tree farm. I so admire senator levin. Clearly when he retires in two years, the United States senate will lose his powerful voice for military families and investigating things that need to be investigated by this body. Michigan is a much better place because of carl levin. Our country, the United States, is a much representative coming up, a conversation on women in politics. The transportation policy conference looks at funding priorities. Later, a Consumer Protection summit hosted by the justice department. George washington enjoyed a long relationship in alexandria. And the time alexandra was founded in 1749 when he was 17, until he died at age of 67. He participated in the political life of the city. He was the trustee of alexandria and he was a justice of the piece of fairfax county. He represented alexandria in the virginia legislature. Even when he was president , he made sure that when they chose this area to be the new site of the Nations Capital that alexander was included in the original district of columbia. We are in the ballroom of gas bees tavern. George washington love to dance. That had balls here for George Washington in 1798 and 799. He died in 1799. They did not have one in 1800 because that was to close to his death. Today, alexander is main state is named after George Washington. Alexandrian like to say that this is George Washingtons home town. Next weekend, more from alexandria. We look behindthescenes on book tv and sunday at 5 00 on American History tv, on cspan3. Now, a conference on women in politics from Southern Methodist university in dallas. They explored the landscape for women as candidates for elective offices in state and federal races. This is an hour and 35 minutes. [applause] thanks so much for having me today. The weather in d. C. I thought i was getting a break. Morning. This weekend i was looking on the internet. I got a much better title. Ask not what you can do for women but what women can do for you. Eight years ago i found myself sitting next to the mayor of salt lake city. He was a nice guy. We started to talk about what to do for living. I told him i work to encourage young women and girls to run for political office. He said, why . In my world the question of why we need more women is not a question. They just ask how do we get more women there. He said i have two daughters. I have a wife. I have a mother. I know what women need. What can women do in office that i cannot do . It was an interesting question. He had no idea what it can of worms he was opening. I really believe that no matter how well intentioned a man in office is his decisions will never be as strong as if he had men and women legislating together. I am happy to say in the years since i started doing this work the world has really come around to this idea. The idea that we need to add women to leadership not because it is there are the right thing to do but because adding more women to leadership is going to make stronger decisions in a better world for all of us. When i talk to groups, the best news comes from the business world. There are two studies that came out a few years ago. I think there are really relevant and exciting. Im going to read this you do not miss the new ones. What they thought was that fortune 500 companies with three or more women on the board gain a significant Performance Advantage over those with the fewest. There were 73 return on sales, 83 serve on equity and 112 of invested capital. Add women, make more money. The companies with the highs a lot of women showed the best performance. This research has been taken so seriously that when i was in belgium speaking to the people on the European Parliament i learned about how they are talking about having 400 women on every corporate board. It is huge. This is something that could change the way business was done. Would this also hold true for politics . Of course it would hold true for politics. Adding women to corporate boards, it is that that women have some magic moneymaking ability. It is that they add diversity in diversity is the key. I want to reduce and think again. There was a recurrence that said research is demonstrated groups with greater diversity to and to perform better than homogeneous went even if the homogeneous groups are more capable. Think about that. That is fascinating. When people say we cannot have coaches because you do not get the best women, at this report says if you have a diversity that well outperform even people who are smarter and more capable on paper. Diversity absolutely matters if you want to get the best results. I speak to a lot of groups of very young women. I ask what do you think, do you have diversity of politics. I am telling you. They all say yes. Of course we do. We have Hillary Clinton. She ran for president. She is secretary of state. We see her every day. The have sarah palin that was all over the place. Michele bachmann. These are big names. We have nancy pelosi running the house. We have record gains in the senate this year. Everyone is talking about how this is such an exciting collection. Now we have 20 senators. We have an entire state with an all female obligation. Women are everywhere in politics. I think that is what most people think. Everybody in this room knows it is not even the slightest bit true. Women hold 18 of the seats in congress. We have been stuck at 23 forever. There is no movement. We still have 9 governors. All of this places the u. S. At about 95th in the world in terms of our female political representation. That is another one that i will ask the students. Where do you think we rank in the world . And as this to domestic groups and abroad. Where do you think the u. S. Ranked . In forming the restaurants will say were no. 1. Many of International Students think the same even when their countries are much much higher. Secretary clinton has said frequently the Unfinished Business of the 21st century is the empowerment of women and girls. It is really cute she is saying that. This drawing attention to the fact that were using half of our brain power. We are using half of our talent pool right now appear adding more women is about what is best ever body. The springing back to my organization. I want to tell you a little bit about the work i do to get more women into leadership. We have a very unique approach to this ageold problem. 12 years ago i was working in a law firm. I was running a Political Action committee on the side. The name of it is the women under 40 Political Action committee. Professor palmer was on the board. We tried to change this name. Whenever got anywhere. The mission is to elect women under 40 to congress. In that demographic women under 40 running for congress, that is an incredibly a typical candidate. Did these women or not old. There were not mail. Many times they were not white. If you look at our congress, that is what you see. Because the or not are typical candidates they had trouble getting traditional donor support. They loved wolf pack because youre the first people to give them a check. Were the first people to say i believe in me as a candidates. I think you can do this. They were incredibly great candidates to back. While other people saw the woman with long hair and high heels who looks like a granddaughter, we saw a political candidate. We were often really write about how great these women are going to be. In the 12 years that will pack is been around we have collected some of the people who are the big names in congress. Debbie Wasserman Schultz started out at age 33. She is backing the rounds trying to get money and establish herself as a viable candidates. The meeting she went to she had our newborn baby with her. I just loved. She was breastfeeding. She lived in florida. She had to bring this baby with her. Cathy rodgers is a republican young woman from Washington State. We helped elect her a while ago. She was 33. She was chosen as one of the top picks for gop leadership. She is going places. Senator Kiersten Gillibrand is one of ours. Gabrielle giffords to everyone knows. She brings so much that to congress. She is very young. Shes been in politics and she was 21. We have all of these non traditional candidates that not only bring diversity of gender but also diversity of experience. They bring Different Things to congress. I will tell you what this problem is. The problem is that if we have all the money in the world, if oprah were to come in and say im going to give you million dollars, we literally would not have that candidate to give the money to. That is a crazy problem. It is because the number of women under 40 who run for congress is teeny tiny. Some have 50 great candidates. On a really good year we would have five. I divided up the board. Half of them continue to run a wolf pack. The rest of us came to running start. Want to grow this pipeline of women who would become candidates. Nobody was really talking to young women about running for office. We decided to not work with candidates which most bridger trying to get women into politics. We decided to not even work with women. We started with girls. People thought we were absolutely crazy. We started with High School Girls. Some of them were 14. That is a lot of years until you can run for congress. Running start is a very long game. The reason we did it has to do with dr. Richard fox. They did research that he will tell you about. I dare not barely even mention it. You have the real expert right here. His research basically says that women do not feel qualified to run for office as men do. We took that and thought that is just horrible. We were surrounded by all of these bright wonderful women. Women have the same qualifications as men do not feel as qualified to run for office. We need to change that. They work with women when theyre still thinking about what they were and what they were capable of. Work at them at a point or you could convince them that they do have what it takes. They are qualified. He can give them the skills they need in order to really feel confident about their leadership ability. He talked to a High School Girl and you tell her if you see Hillary Clinton how could i ever the Hillary Clinton . How could i get up to the top ranks . It is not rocket science. There is not one magic formula. It is all about hard work and learning the skills. We get these young girls to think of themselves as candidates. We have been around since 2007. It is still a baby organization. We started with 20 girls from could 2007. As a 2013 we have trained 7000 young women around the country. That is another story about how we are able to do so much. The most exciting thing is we started i knew it was a good idea to train girls. I knew it made sense and that it could really make a difference. I have no idea i could convince the girls. The program is rigorous. And makes these girls do things they do not want to do. Public speaking is just excruciating for all of us. Being put on camera. We bring in reporters and interview them on camera. They hate it. That is worst than public speaking. They get into fundraising. The great news is we started out with 20. The next year they told their friends. We had 300 girls apply to our program. After the 2008 election will when we had all of these amazing people running for office or politics is call for the first time and so long, we started to accept applications for our 2009 Summer Program after the election. At this point we were working out in my attic. We did not have much money. The first week we got 1000 applications in the mail. We made a stupid mistake of opening them in november and posting them until february. By february will be closed if we had received 30,000 applications. The great thing is that we really do see results. The girls that come to our program right is emails all the time. I have to redo a quick one. Before attending running start would never occur to me to run for office. To my surprise i enjoyed politics and the opportunity it gives me to make a difference. A plan to run for office in the near future. That is what we hear. I was in israel speaking to this group of young women. I will asking women raise your hand, let me know how many of you think it is a good idea if there were more women in politics. They all raised their hands. And never had a group that does not. Then i followed it up with the question, not tell me who is going to run. Which you are going to run . One girl raised her hands. Why are you not going to run i asked . They said i am a behindthe scenes person. Shelley would do a fabulous job. She is really good at all of this stuff but i will help her campaign. Shelley is good, not me. Lets talk to barbara. They feel like they have real responsibility to step up. What i want to do is to take the girls to apply to our program. They are such amazing girls. Theyre going to bring some is to politics when they get there. The reason they want to be in politics is not because they want to be powerful people. They want to because theyre coming from communities or schools where they see real problems and nobody doing anything to fix it. That is exactly who i want to see in politics. I am incredibly encouraged every day when i work with these young women that they are stepping out of the sidelines. Theyre realizing that they have a responsibility to get up there and run. [applause] good morning. I am more the darth vader of politics. Thank you so much for inviting me. My title is why women are not running for office. I am a typical social scientist. Im going to give you a world wind of statistics. Quickly. Ask me more about these later if you have questions. If you look at the major elected positions in the United States men occupied between 75 and 95 . The percentage of women in our legislature, we are 90 fit. Maybe we have gone up. We are 95th in the world. Theres a big difference between the parties here, democrats and republicans. If you look at the u. S. House, 31 of democrats in the senate republican. Similar. If you draft this out, at the democrats have slow and steady gains among women. The republicans have been flat lining. What is going on . Researchers have looked at a bunch of explanations to try to explain why women are so slow to move into office. There must be widespread discrimination, right . Although individual women will say they felt discriminated by a voter or a media source, there is no evidence of broad discrimination. When they run for office they raise as much money as their male counterparts. Theyre just as likely to win and get vote shares. Another explanation is electoral structures. It is hard to run for office. We have very candidates entered politics. If you want to run for congress to have to build your own campaign organization. He might be a democrat or republican. You have to be very entrepreneurial and raise your own money. Theres something to that explanation. These of it that the people run for office. Some of the key professions are those of not been in at the highest level. What we have done is we have spent the last few years serving men and women will in the professions that proceed a career in politicians. The jobs are law, business, education, or political activists. We see if men and women are equally ambitious and running for office. In 2001 we interviewed a Sample Survey of almost 3700. We went back and contacted over 2007 years later. 200 seven years later. We just surveyed a National Sample of high school and College Students to see if they have future potential interest in running for office. We literally got those a month ago. We spent the last 12 years examining men and women levels of ambitions of running for office. What have we found . In 2001 when as some of their ever considered running for office, people in their mid 40s, a generally successful. Theres a 16. Gap between women and men. These equally qualified women and men. Then we went back to 2011. No change in woman saying they are running for office. This will present the from our high school and College Students. The gap seems to be fairly static. It is not changing dramatically. The republicans cannot want to run and Democratic Women do. Not really. There is a 20 point gap among republican women with republican men. It is not about party. If you get to the pool of candidates, party is not the explanation. What are the explanations . I have seven explanations. I will go through them quickly. Women are more likely to proceed by is and as highly competitive. There is a perception that is very competitive. There is a perception there will be biased against them. None of those may be particularly true. That perception of competition is one reason women are less likely to say they will run for office. The as women about the key activities, how you feel about soliciting Campaign Contributions are going door todoor with the constituents . Women are more likely to feel a willingness to engage. Maybe these things lead to breaking down the doors. There were some very high profile instances. Instead of these things breaking down barriers, we will discourage them. If youre sitting there watching this you are a 35 year old law partner of things it looks less appealing. We found this in 2011. These highly qualified women perceive themselves as less qualified than their male counterparts. They are twice as likely to say they are not at all qualified to run for office. The good to very qualified there is a huge gap between men and women. You did not run for office unless you think you are good. These are it self assessments. We ask people whether they thought they were confident or competitive. Hillary clinton is a you have to have a thick skin. That is what weve done repeatedly that women say you do not have. Been recruited by real political people makes running for political of israel. Women are less likely to have those suggestions made to them. It is even sure about your colleagues at work. Someone from your church. It is across the board. They are doing a vast majority of household responsibilities. There are six times more likely than their male counterpart to say they are responsible. They are 10 times more likely to say i am responsible for the majority or all of the child care. It makes it far more complicated to run for office for women. Women of all professions are less likely than their male counterparts, and the gender gaps in every category. The two biggest reasons are that are not recruited and they do not feel qualified. Women remain the primary caretakers of the home and children. Those are more complicated considerations. Where to go from here . The one thing is recruitment matters. That is one thing that equalizes things. Recruiting closes that gap if you get to enough women and suggest them. Spread awareness about womens electoral success. There is broad scale relief that there harder to run. It is not harder to get a vote or wind. So women redid many women perceive it is more difficult to do that. In may feel that way. I think im going to cut it off right there. Thank you very much. I am going to start to tell you why it matters once women get elected to office. What im going to talk about is a connection between electing women to office and the representation of women issues in the state legislatures which is where i specialize. The thing that has led me to this question was i started doing research on this area. I came across a big puzzle which we have done all of this research on women in politics and whether women make a difference. Theres a fundamental connection between electing women to office and seeing the policies in the state legislature. It is really variable. It depends somewhat kind of legislature you are in. We cannot get this consisting connection between the presence of women and these outcomes without having xyz variables in between. Parties or often ignored at the highest of proving women made a difference. That was the important part of the research. We know from antidotes that parties matter. What im going to talk about is what partisanship can mean, particularly to different ways we see partisanship affect how women represent women. By have turned in the shortterm and longterm ways. I am going to show you some evidence from the state legislature. Shortterm forces are those forces inside of the legislative body. Particularly two things. Whatever party is in charge really controls the agenda process. If anybody has been in the legislature, this is not a shock. It is something that we do not necessarily think of as having so much control. Especially when they are polarized. They are very different. There are very consistent it that they really can have a show cold. That means if youre in the Minority Party and you want to introduce your womens issues bill is going nowhere. Why is this shortterm tax begin change very quickly. The longterm forces are harder to put our fingers on. We know the party has changed a lot since the 1960s. People have turned them realignment depending on how you see it. It boils down to something very basic. Parties have picked of different types of women issues in different types of women have identified the partys over time. The era have legislation that many considered in the late 70s became a partisan issue over time. It asked congress with flying colors. But 1982 it was extremely partisan. More women started running for office. These forces are little longer over time. Theyre harder to put our fingers on. I am going to show you some evidence from a couple of studies that i have done. Some of this Research Work done for quite a while talks about women issue bills. When i say the bills, you can see the categories i am talking about. I am talking about things that fundamentally affect women. Anything from bills about their health specifically to marriage bills, child custody bills, et cetera. And im looking at the enfire spectrum of these types of bills. If you look over here, the yellow is Democratic Women, the pimping is the pink is republican women, the you can see how successful they were in pushing their agendas through. Shockingly, the democrats are much more successful at getting their womens issues bills through. Interestingly we have two states where republican men are quite successful at the same time. Why . They were both transitioning into republican controlled chambers. Thats arkansas and texas, which kind of bookend here, both of which have changed over to republican. So it gives a little evidence foffer that longterm party change as well. Here in the republican controlled chambers, you see a stark difference. Republicans become more successful. Particularly republican men are the most successful about legislating about womens issues. Particularly republican men have the least to say about womens issues. They introduce the fewest bills and they pass the fewest bills. The south dakota Democratic Women did not even introduce anything, so they had nothing to pass. So while this is better, i saw all these partisan differences and they did not really match with a lot of Research Prior to that. So i am working on now trying to understand both of these Party Changes at the same time, especially this longterm change in how democratic and republican women see womens issues. But i wanted to point something out. I think i mentioned what has been termed the party gap. I see a big difference between Democratic Women increasing and increasing their election to office and republican women, as someone put it, flatlining. In some of the state legislatures that is not quite the case. If you look across the bottom you see that party gap where they are increasing in state legislatures. If you look ated sd, arizona, you see there is a strong republican presence. In washington, that is actually true, too. So this is a party change and the women elected to the Washington State legislature for four sample years. 1973, 1983, and 2003. You will see that the party gap is actually closed a little bit in the Washington State legislature. I picked washington mostly as a sample case. I have several other states im working on. That they consistently have a large number of women in their statehouse. So they are very interesting to the study. What difference does it make . Focusuickly im going to you on the contrast. These are the bills introduced in the same womens issues category. You can see in 1973, note the scale goes up to two, that there are not a lot of womens issues legislation introduced, and it is primarily introduced by democratic men. That starts to change a little bit in 1983. But republican men and democratic men are still largely controlling the womens issues agenda. I will point out here, this is when republican men started to introduce a lot of bills about those morality issues. As the Republican Party picked that up under reagan. In 1993, which is the year of the woman, all of a sudden, you see a big difference. You see women start to control the legislation in these issue areas, particularly Democratic Women who have a pretty good advantage at this time. You may not remember that. But i will point out, 2003 and 2004 is when there was a very close democratic majority in the washington house. You see it becomes much more diverse. You see republican women and Democratic Women introducing bills to the womens issues agenda as well as men from both parties. I will point out a couple issues. Men like to focus on punishment when you talk about issues. If you talk about the sex offender category, everyone wanted to regulate the sex offendor category. Most regulations were focused on what kind of punishment. Increasing punishment, keeping track, et cetera. Women tended to focus on more societal explanations, particularly Democratic Women. In discrimination and health areas, republican women and Democratic Women look similar. They introduce similar types of legislation. But when it comes to things like Child Support and child care and child custody, when republican and Democratic Women introduce bills, they actually introduce very different options. So that parity law that i mentioned before actually comes from Washington State. In the 1993 session there were competing bills over and over to either keep the parity law on the state party books or get rid of it. I think that is a great exampe of the kind of competing agendas that get introduced. So just to conclude, i find evidence of shortterm and longterm Party Effects. The longterm Party Effects are kind of the most interesting with this party gap. Where we see parties electing different parties of women. What i can show is it has a real and important part in the outcome. Thanks very much. [applause] im barbara palmer. Dennis and i have been working on this since 1998. This really gives you that individual psychological picture in the decision to actually run for office. That Decision Making that goes on at the individual level. And dennis and i are big picture people. We like to muck around in data. We have been looking at historical trends since 1900 trying to figure out if there are patterns that can help us explain why we have so few women in congress and in state legislatures. That is the perspective that were coming from. To sort of dovetail into something that was said, women dont see themselves as qualified. This is an amazing quote attributed to he will more roosevelt. She said, we will have reached true equality when there as many stupid women in politics as there are stupid men. [laughter] so richard has already told you some of knees numbers. I am going to repeat them to drive home the point here. In 1962 when you looked at the women in the u. S. House, there were 11 of them. There were six democrats and five republicans. So the partisan distribution among the women in congress was really remarkably equal. That was true for a really long time. However, 50 years later, as we look at the partisan distribution of the women that were elected in 2012 to serve in congress, the story is really very, very different. The split between democratic and republican women is nearly 31. Among the Record Number of 78 women elected to the house, 58 are democrats and only 20 are republicans. Among those 20 in the senate, 16 are democrats, four are republicans. This gap is getting wider and wider and wider every single election cycle. We know since the early 1970s we have seen the steady if not very slow and steady increase in the number of women who have been serving in congress. There is Something Else going on here. If you disaggregate those numbers by party, you get a very different sort of story. This is why i think your research sort of dovetails with this really, really well. Since the 1990s we have seen this huge party gap developing. It is not true just in congress. You dont just see this in the u. S. House and senate, you also see it in state legislatures. Thats what dennis will be talking to in just a minute. So we know that we have very candidatecentered elections. Basically, if i wake up tomorrow, and i want to run for whatever office as a republican, i can. There is nog nothing the Republican Party at the national, state, or local level can do to stop me. If i get the requisite number of signatures to get my name on the ballot, i run in the election. We have a decentralized system for running candidates. At the same time we know parties do play a very Important Role in the recruitment of candidates. Particularly at the state level. I can give you just an example from my home state of minnesota, for example. In about 10 years ago, there was a representative who was part of the Democratic Party in minnesota, the d. F. L. Ers, and she got fired of being one of a handful of women in her own partys caucus. This is an interesting story of how agenda and party sort of interact. She was looking around the House Chamber in minnesota thinking, this is ridiculous. So she went to Party Leaders. It was going to be a bad year for democrats in the state. Nobody wanted to be in charge of candidate recruitment for the parties. She stepped up and said, i will be in charge of candidate recruitment. But i am going to make recruiting women candidates a priority. I will open a female candidate for every single state legislative seat there is. The Old Boy Network were like, go ahead. Go for it. Whatever. Like thats going to happen. And she did it. She singlehandedly in one election doubled the number of democrat women in the minnesota statehouse. I am not saying it went from one to two. It went from about a dozen to over 20. And the following the election cycle, she went back and asked the women who had lost to run again, they did, and they won. So they saw another spike in the number of Democratic Women in the minnesota house. So the good news and bad news in that story. The good news is that in one election cycle there was huge change. And one party it took a party leader who happened to be a woman to make it a priority. It is not that there is, again, discrimination, i just dont think it is on the radar screen. Especially for the National Party and for state parties. It is not a priority. And the organizations that have started that are out there to do recruitment for the parties have really started at the state level. The republicans started doing this back in the 1980s with the lugar excellence in Public Service series, which was created in indiana in 1989. There are programs like that now in about a dozen states across the country. The democrats started doing this called emerge america. It started in 2002 and they have this in about a dozen states as well. These are programs external to the parties. They are focused on recruiting women for their parties, but they are external to the party organization. So what i think is interesting, in 2010 the republicans talked a lot about how they needed to get on the ball and start redruting recruiting women candidates. They recruited kathy mcmorris, the head of the National Republican committee, to get out there and recruit candidates which is something republicans had never done before at the national level. A lot of republican operatives said, you know what . Women can actually do better in the in a lot of areas is they they are perceived as a bias. They get that, you know, that assumption made about them that they are not part of the Old Boy Network. Which can help when you have some scandals going on. My favorite example of this is nicki haileys race. She ran for governor of North Carolina. She said, look, im different, im not part of the frat Party Politics we have seen in our state for a couple years. She was running after the out going republican governor ran into a little bit of trouble. If you may remember, he sort of disappeared for a couple days and was off the grid for a while, and then he said he was hiking the appalachian trail, and he wasnt. Yeah. It turns out he was actually in argentina visiting his mistress. You know this is true because you cant make it up. And the state legislature started an investigation and started impeachment proceedings. My favorite line from that whole story is of course his wife is the one that literally threw his stuff on the lawn of the statehouse and wrote a book. She said she was trying to explain this to their two sons. They had a 13yearold son. She was trying to explain what was happening, what as going on with their father. The 13yearold said, quote, oh, my gosh, this is going to be worse than elliott spitser. [laughter] the point is, when Party Leaders make this a priority, you can see change. The problem is, it just hasnt been a priority. The point is, im going to turn it over now to dennis to show you the numbers. Kelley i want to crush i want to crush any illusions that what we do is glamorous. What we do involves looking at those individually. Just as one anecdote, we code whether any primary candidate listed in the single result is male or female. Now, that strikes forward a lot. Barbara, no problem. How about pat . Rob . So it also involves digging through some archival of anything we could find at that point. Now, barb said were interested in sort of the big picture over time. There are three steps in getting to the house of representatives. You have to put yourself out there, first of all, to run in a primary. And this pattern will become very, very familiar. So we start here in 1956, and you see sort of basically partisan equality. It tells you until the until you hit the late 1980s, and then the percentage of Democratic Women seeking the nomination starts to exceed the equivalent percentage among republicans. The next step, who gets nominated in these primaries . There we go again. And interestingly, you see particular spikes of that open up that gap and then it continues in rows. So flat line, jump for the democrats, continues slow growth, and republicans relatively stable over time. This is the number of women elected to the u. S. House of representatives. And the one thing everybody talks about, the year of the woman, in 1992, but that year of the woman was disproportionately democrat. And it was a great year. There were three issues there, if you recall. The house banking scandal forced a lot of incumbents to retire. They just dont get it in the wake of the Clarence Thomas hearings, and probably lesser known, why there were open sealts, that was the last year a member of congress could retire and convert Campaign Funds to personal funds. So a lot of people got while the getting was good. If we move over, women as a portion of their partys delegation, the gap is even more exaggerated. So democrat women are nearly 30 of all democrats in the house. Republican women under 10 of the partys majority. This is aggregating over six year cycles in the senate. We see a similar pattern. So running from house nominees elected to the house, elected to the senate, and just to show this isnt restricted to the national level, and going back to there are your Lower Chamber of state legislatures, Upper Chamber of state legislatures. So essentially our conclusion from this that we can speculate is that there are forces in our political culture that have led to slow, steady growth in Women Seeking Office and being elected. Slow, steady. But those forces somehow operate disproportionately to create a very wide and alarming, according to republican discussions within the party, different between the reputation of women in the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Thank you. Now were going to have suse step in and sort of reflect on her experience in light of what the academics may have established. [applause] from the nonacademic perspective. I am a lawyer by training and i do not have background in this. I love coming to panels where i can get in deep with the academic research. I have several comments. Just to sort of take them in order, one of the things that richard talks about as one of the obstacles is that women dont think that they are as thick skinned as men. So what we find when we train our young women, and this is both talking to our women under 40 candidates and with the high school and college, we now train young professional women, too, we find that they often will say they dont have the personality to run for office. So they would like to run. Often they will say i really would love to to this, but i am not a good public speaker, i cant ask for money. Literally they will say i cant ask. They will say they are too scared to go on camera, et cetera. What we have found is that a lot of people do stereotype themselves as i am not this type of person. Honestly, one week of training is all most of our students get. In one week of training, it is more than enough to get them on their way to not just being comfortable with these skills but actually being good at these skills. That was actually kind of a revelation to me. When we first did this i thought we would have to keep working with them over the year to really engrain it. We have an example of a student who came into the program that absolutely refused to do some of the trainings. Well, tried to refuse. We dont allow them to refuse. They would go off and run for Student Government at school. They would realize they are not rocket science. All of these skills are things you can learn. Likewise, one of the other seven of those reasons that dr. Fox talked about was talking about how women do most of the house work. We were talking about this at dinner. Women do do most of the house work and do impossible jobs and do well at all of those things. The truth is, thats not good relief for men or women that women do so much of that. What we have started to realize, and we havent done this yet, but i hope another group will pick this up, what we really need to be doing is training the men, too. When we talk to High School Girls, we need to talk to high school boys, too, about responsibility and about fairness and equity as you go grow up and get married and have a family. These are things that can be taught. Tracy was talking a lot about the fact about which issues are pressed when you have republicans in the legislature or democrats in the legislature, and the differences between men and women. One thing we hear often, how do you make sure you are only training the good ones . It is an interesting question. You know, it assumes i only want a woman elected to office if she is going to believe exactly what i believe. Frankly, i usually hear this from really liberal Democratic Women. They are, well, how do you make sure you will not get a sarah palin in the mix . What i really believe, and we were talking about diversity early, the Democratic Women, the democratic men, the republican women, the republican men, they are all pushing different issues. What we really want is we want to see a lot of different perspectives on a lot of different issues. You really need to have all of them there. The fact we talked so much about the panel talked so much about partisanship, it is something we talked about almost every day. It is so difficult to convince republican young women to be trained in our programs. It is something we think about all the time. It is difficult for us to get sometimes to get republican women to understand this cause. Bud palmer who is on this board knows how hard we work on all of this. When we get High School Girls to come into our programs, i think a lot of High School Girls are still looking at their parents politics. They grew up in a republican family, then they are still going to be thinking that way. If they grew up in a democratic family, the same way. Once they move into college, they start thinking for themselves. Many of us say the reason they are now democratic is that they dont feel as comfortable a home in the Republican Party that they care about if they care about womens issues. We had this great panel a couple years ago where we had the head of the d. C. Republican party and then we had the head of the maryland Democratic Party. And the democratic woman was talking all about the trages that they do for women, how they work actively to recruit women to run for office. How they actively they do a lot of panels and training so that women will feel comfortable and supported as they run for office. Then it was the republican womans turn. She talked about a whole lot of other thimmings, but they did not talk when training at all. During question and answer someone raised their hands and said, tell us about what training you do for republican women in d. C. Which is a small group, by the way. She said, well, we do lots and lots of training, but our trainings are coed. We dont see any reason to just train women. We think women and men, they are not so different, we train them together. The truth is, there are not very Many Republican trainings anywhere. There are so many big democratic groups that do all of this recruitment training. Womens campaign forum. I could go on and on. Barb talked about a lot of them. On the republican side, there is hardly anybody. The truth is that there is some magic to training women in a group of women. There really is something the women do still have a different enough set of obstacles that they need to be trained on their own so they can understand how things are different and how to overcome those obstacles. Let me see what else i wanted to tell you all about . The last thing, richard was talking about social media for young people. Social media is one of the main reasons they think they dont want to run for office. They have seen the effect. They know the photos they have online. And these are not girls gone wild. These are top students. They are students who have done all the right things, but it is difficult in this day and age to escape without a photo of something that looks compromising. Maybe you have a drink in your hand. There is a fasmse example of a woman named crystal ball. I dont know if you remember her story. She ran for congress in virginia. She ran a very good campaign. She raised a lot of money. But she woke up one day to find actually, the story is, she was at a very conservative meeting. With a whole lot of retirees. As she was speaking, her phone buzzed. She saw a text from her husband that said, as soon as you are done, get out of there quickly and talk to no one. She wondered what was going on. She got out of there and called her. Him. He said there are photos of you from a party. She was a young woman. The party was when she was 20. They are only slightly compromising. I dont know if anyone has seen these photos, but i think for many people, that would have ruined their campaign. That would have been it. Here are these photos on the internet leaked and everybody saw them. She decided to confront this head on, and she talked about these photos and she said i was not doing anything wrong. She said this is a young woman having fun. She was able to attack it head on. While she did not win her race, she saved her reputation. She will go on to do other great things, im sure. Social media is something we need to talk to girls about, to be very, very careful, and then confront things head on if they go get called on it later. So thank you all. [applause] thank you very much. I want to thank the panelists who both went through odessies in airports and delays to be with us today. A different experience in Student Government is to the leave them with Different Directions later. That is an excellent question and i could talk to you all day about what we do at a running start. One of the programs is we go to colleges, we do daylong training in the house to run Student Government at senior college. Girls are tapering off and need to be involved. A lot of them have to do with a voice. In college, when men dont run as much. We think it is incredibly great training. That is incredible training for running later on . I dont think they are having bad experiences. We survey potential candidates and asked if they were running for office. Those people that said they had run expressed higher levels of ambition to run 30 years later in life. We survey the women in the house, the u. S. House, and half of them had participated in Student Government in high school or college. There is a dropoff. That is why i think going to college and not just running for president , but running for Student Government, it has a huge impact later on. I should preface this by saying that my discipline is english literature. It is a question about words and categories. It is mostly directed at tracy, but everybody they used this term, how do you decide what is a womens issue . Not that i think it is a bad turn necessarily although i think it is horribly over use. I am also wondering what happens to efforts to explain how the gender gap. Since 1982, if you introduced the word feminist into the mix and i recognize the problems in defining it, i think he can be done for the purpose of Political Science and research. That is my question. That is the 64,000 question. Particularly for me, since my interesting is understanding women of both parties, i wanted to take a really broad definition. There are categories that disproportionately affect women, but anything can fall in those categories. Something, and for republican women is business grants. That falls into my category of the quality of discrimination. Republican women sometimes will phrase something in a gender with it on the surface doesnt appear to be gendered. Not to said Democratic Women cant do that, but the issues are more easily matched with their party. I think that business grants are a good example. You see it sometimes with foreign affairs, made a particular country. On the surface, it doesnt have anything to do with gender, a republican woman says, as a woman with two sons in combat and as a mother, the language is gendered but the bill is not necessarily. I can say a difference between the work i have done as some of the previous work is that i include conservative bills and dont define it as just womens issues. Some people dont like that have some people do. I find it hard to understand how republican women legislate on womens issues. It could be a spark. Something that i think tracy mentioned, you had a reversal from a bipartisan approach in the early 80s. They filtered it out, and seriously, if you go back to that time, the most prominent Woman Associated with opposition to the era was phil chapman. It would be interesting to see to what extent that developed as a stereotype regarding attitudes toward women at that time. Obviously, other factors have come in, but i think it is both a political and cultural phenomenon that opens that up. It is a continuing matter for research. When i was a republican [laughter] i wanted to run for the legislature. I had just had a baby the week before. I wanted to be a delegate to the national convention, and i was told by more than one of the republicans, remember i was end of the beginning. I was supporting him. They told me i could not do this because i did not have any money. You had to have money to be a delegate in the Republican Party. It doesnt bother democrats or Democratic Women. And also, when it comes to Something Like social media, the republicans that i saw, they are more influenced by the opinion of the men in the party. The word feminist is a nono, but democrats dont have that kind of problem. If theyre caught with a drink in their hand, they say, so . You show it, there is a lot more guts when it comes to taking a chance in the Democratic Party. I went to Republican Convention in fort worth, and they had votes on era and the equal rights amendment for young people. And abortion. They both failed. I thought, what am i doing here . I can see these vast differences. For years, republicans did not speak ill about other republicans. Democrats dont have a problem with that either. Out a republican primary, and i would say maybe republican women wont have this problem anymore. Have things changed . I am doing a project the compares legislatures over 50 years, how changes have happened over time. One thing i have noticed is around the time you see this split between the democratic and republican parties, you also see a change in the type of republican woman that is elected. In to give you a really good example, one of the women who in the legislature was introducing bills defending womens rights to get divorced and custody issues, things like that. The Republican Party was introducing covenant marriage. There is a fundamental opposition that did not exist in the 1970s. There was a more general non opposition. First off, thank all of you for this session. I am the former Steering Committee chairmen. For those of you that dont know, it is a Democratic Political pac. When we look at the disparity between democratic and republican women, the left and the right say the same things. Why dont they want to train women or have these programs . We also have a staff and training program. We train young individuals to be staffed so that they immediately go to a candidates campaign. Theisnt that happening on right . I can give you an example of a recent development that i think its fascinating. About a month ago, a group of republican women got together and told the old boys, we are done with you. It is too extreme, you have such a narrow range of issues that youre talking about. It doesnt appeal to a broader look publicans or women. They got voters to support them and they have created their own organization. I cant remember the name of it, but the primary focus is to recruit republican women. The only requirement is a need to be fiscally conservative. They have stated, we dont care what your position is on social issues. We want to ask you about abortion or gay marriage. What we do care about is going back to fiscal conservatism. And they have gotten a lot of trust within the states. If they appear to have some pretty substantial Financial Support and i think it will be interesting to see what happens. This is something i know is going on in minnesota. I think it gets to both of your point about this. This morning, i looked up, republican women who were either defeated or got out because they were tired of it in the house, it is Nancy Johnson in connecticut, Deborah Pryce in ohio, maryland, washington, and melissa heart of pennsylvania. Part of the reason they got out was feeling the pressure of the possibility of our primary challenger from the social right. Others were defeated because of moderation and not getting established support when they were facing a tough race. That is something that i think was addressed as well. [inaudible] is there evidence to show that women are not voting for women . Thank you for being here in washington, d. C. Its my pleasure to bring on stage kastio. Thank you for that great ridership news and your assessment of our challenges. You certainly made some fast tracks in your 16 months on board at afta so congratulations to you too. As michael mentioned, we have a unique opportunity to influence the nations investment in Public Transportation. Map 21 was a step in the right direction but we have more to do before it expires in september 2014. We need to ramp up now. I applaud the hard work and stewardship of the authorization tax force which is developing recommendations for our industry. My thanks go to jeff nelson, general manager of metro link and chair of aftas legislative committee and the fine members that are teaming up with him. Please lend your voice to this effort because it matters. It matters, as michael say. So please see either rob or brian to share your thoughts and get involved. Tomorrow please lend your voice to another critical effort that is speaking directly to members of congress about the people of Public Transportation. The people that the industry directly employs. The 400,000 and growing men and women across our country who are working in factories, manufacturing plants, in the front offices as operators, engineers and planners. The people employed in the 1. 9 million jobs we indirectly support in every district, every legislative district in this country. The people who take the 10. 5 billion, yes thats billion with a capital b buses trains as michael shared with us. There is strength in these numbers because there are people behind these numbers. Every individual in this room has a compelling message about the value of Public Transit to the people in your communities. It is time to make Public Transportation come alive in the eyes for congress. By talking about the lives, the lives, ladies and gentlemen that we change each and every day. The lives of a mother in north philadelphia who takes two buses to get to her job at the customer call center. The life of the elderly couple who moved to charlotte to take advantage of Transit Oriented Development to keep their independence when they can no longer drive. A daughter in west texas with a mental disability who relies on transit to get to and from her job when she would otherwise be house bound. That nurse in cleveland who takes the cleveland line to get to her job at the hospital. That veteran in denver who found a new career in Public Transportation as a mechanic. There is no question the Public Transit enriches lives. For proof, look no further than the devastating impact of Superstorm Sandy on the northeast, my community. Those cities came to a halt when Public Transportation was forced to shut down. But now ladies and gentlemen, were back, were back and so is the northeast. And i am proud to say that afta was with us every single step of the way with resources that are second to none. But please, dont take my word for it. Just look at the company that afta keeps. Afta was named one of the most Influential Brands in washington by the national journal. Policy makers, the media, our Association Partners listen, they listen when we talk. They trust what we say. They respect our research. They act on our policies. And they often seek our input. So you should all be very proud of that. I know i take pride in it. Now it is my pleasure and my honor to introduce to you two trusted voices in washington. First joseph szabo an administrator of the f. T. A. Which National Rail policy in programs. As a board member of new Jersey Transit, we appreciate joes direct interest in the northeast Corridor Commission and of the nec future effort. The northeast corridor accommodates eight rail transit operators and the future of the nec is critical to each of them. His entire career, joe has been centered on advocacy and helping communities and joe, ladies and gentlemen, is also a fifth generation railroader. Please help me welcome joseph szabo. Thank you and good morning afta. On behalf of president obama and secretary lahood its an honor to join you once again this morning along with peter rogoff. I think youre going to hear me stay on the same theme that weve already established this morning. Mike did a bit of talking about the importance of systems in talking about the record ridership growth that transit is seeing. There is a simple fact that world class economies do not develop by accident. And they are certainly not sustained by resting on our laurels. World class committees require world class transportation. And it requires continuous improvement. So in order to remain the leading global economy, its absolute we must continue to advance our transportation system. And the key words are transportation system. Its about each mode working in unison with the others to move people and good. Four years ago president obama laid out a bold vision for rail in america. During these fours years the effects of record Level Private and federal investment in the rail network has been nothing short of Game Changing. 2012 was one of the greatest years for rail in generations. Lets start with safety. It was the safest year in railroad history. Amtrak achieved record on time performance and record ridership growth. Rail continued to be the Fastest Growing mode of Public Transit. We saw freight surge above 1 million unit which is close to a record. The stage is set now for world class, 220 mile per hour Passenger Rail service which is ready to break ground this summer. In the midwest 110 mile per hour service. The service was introduced on both the chicago st. Louis routes and chicago detroit routes and both of those lines will be running at those sustained speeds with improved reliability cuttings the trips to close to an hour. Its going to include Equipment Certified to go 125 Miles Per Hour manufactured here in america. In order to bring World Class Service to one of the most densely populated rail markets, the northeast corridor, we launched the First Comprehensive planning in rail since the Carter Administration and we obligated 100 of our funding well in advance of her september 30th statutory deadline. Of the 11 projects completed last year, the main rail project extension alone, in addition to generating millions of dollars in new commercial and Residential Development around the brunswick train station, it created and sustained jobs at 53 companies in 20 states. So that was last year. And all of this is just simply a warmup. The 19 billion this administration has invested in rail since 2009 is building, improving or creating 6,000 corridor miles, 40 stations, 75 planning studies and 30 state rail plans or Service Development plans. With our high speed and inner city Passenger Rail program weve been able to partner with 32 states and invest in 152 projects. But the next two years will be our busiest yet. Were at 3. 6 billion in funding are complete, under construction or set to begin. In the Pacific Northwest 21 projects are moving forward that will increase round trips and cut trip times in a growing rail market connecting portland and seattle. North carolina is moving forward with a series of Construction Projects along the charlotte to raleigh corridor that will improve safety, reliability and frequency for both passer and freight trains. It will connect in to the northeast corridor. By tend of this year North Carolina and virginia will finish a planning effort to cut 90 minutes off todays trip time between rally and dc. Then you take a look around the country in states like georgia and tech texas. Coming back to the northeast corridor. Our planning there called the nec future is one of the largest projects ever undertaken in the United States. The end result will be a clear vision for how to optimize the northeast corridor in a 30 year rail Investment Plan to guide future investments. In addition to planning, this administration has invested more than 3 billion, more than any Previous Administration in northeast Corridor Development projects. These are devoted to track upgrades, modernizing systems, replacing infrastructure, buying new equipment and improvements to speed, frequency and reliability. These improvements are allowing for faster train speeds between philadelphia and new york. And for the untangling of delay causing bottlenecks in convenience and delaware and rhode island. Stations are being enhanced in boston, washington, d. C. , bwi airport and in new york where pen station will be expanded. Major Engineering Projects are moving forward including baltimore mothers tunnel. Weve made investments in routes including two project that is have already come in on time and on budget. Now the benefits of all these projects could stand alone. They are already advancing american transportation. But like the u. S. Chamber of commerce, the u. S. Conference of marries, the american road and transportation builders and the American Society of civil engineers, just to name a few, just like them, the president recognizes this isnt enough. And as the president said in his stated of the union, i quote, ask any c. E. O. Where theyd rather locate and hire a country with deteriorating bridges or one with high speed rail. The president has two programs the rebuild America Partnership and putting americans to work improving infrastructure and building new infrastructure. And while this will create even more high Quality Construction and manufacturing jobs, most importantly it will help tackle Pivotal Growth and mobility challenges. The rebuild America Partnership calls for leveraging partnership to create infrastructure most critical to our businesses including transportation. While fix it first targets our most urgent transportation repairs. Additionally the president calls for a bipartisan instruct bank for Long Term Development including long term rail funding. Now sensible steps are going to have to be take on the tackle our budget challenges. A modern Transportation Network including rail is not a luxury but its an absolute necessity. Today we are looking at the challenge of how to move 100 million more people and 4 billion more tons of freight over the next four decades. All while our highways and airports are stretched close to their limits and the overreliance on them continues to grow. Last month Texas Transportation Institute reports highway congestion alone cost our economy 20 billion a year. Close to 3 billion gallons of fuel, enough to fill the new orleans super dome is wasted annually. They measured travel reliability. Underscoring the need to provide more transportation alternatives, the study increasing amounts of time have to be set aside to ensure ontime arrivals for high priority freeway trips. Our reports are struggling to keep up with modern demand. About 20 of all flights are delayed. As a way of confronting high fuel prices and changing demand, airlines are making significant cutbacks to shorten flights to small and mediumsized cities. With Service Levels targeted to the marketplace, the most Cost Effective and most environmentally friendly mode to move both people and freight. Two tracks can carry as many travelers in an hour as 16 lanes of highway. By the cost of building rail favors compares favorably with roads, it only consumes onethird of the land acquired by roadways. Americans travel habits are evolving. Michael touched on it today. This old comment message that america has too much of a car culture. According to a recent study over the last eight years, americans have driven less while using Passenger Rail and Public Transit in Record Numbers. Amtraks ridership last year, the record was its ninth in its last 10 years and part of a close to 50 growth in ridership since the year 2000. From 1995 until 2008, ridership on a Commuter Rail shot of 72 . In 2011, americans took 10. 4 billion trips on Public Transportation. Ridership was even higher. These travel habits are changing fastest among young people. The study also noted that in an eightyear period starting in 2001, young people reduced their vehicle miles traveled by 23 while increasing their use of rail and Public Transit by a whopping 40 . It is not just about the next generation. Aarp have made it clear that more and more seniors are seeking communities that make it easier to walk places and use Public Transportation rather than driving. Allowing them to remain active and independent as they age. Compared to the decade prior in 2009, seniors make 328 million more trips by rail and transit. This is the future and that we will have to prepare for. That is why we have to do better. With railroads safety, our goal is to ensure continuous improvements to save lives, fortified the industry for its growing role in moving people and freight. We will continue to work with the railroads to implement positive train control and will also continue supplementing technology with our traditional enforcement model with initiatives like a Risk Reduction and systems safety programs, which encourage the industry to take a hard look at the risk factors that are precursors to accidents. With all of our Passenger Rail investments, we will continue to focus on three key priorities. Managing and executing high quality projects. Bringing them in on time and on budget. Land the foundation for sustainable longterm Passenger Rail improvements by helping states and communities, regions do good planning and forge ahead with incremental improvements. Insuring Service Improvements are tailored to the distinct needs of each market. Four years ago, we learn that a modern rail network is not just a priority for this administration, it is a priority to the american people. Of the 10. 1 billion in high speed intercity Passenger Rail funding that was available, we received more than 500 applications from around the country requesting more than seven times of the amount available. Just like the early stages of the interstate highway system, we are in the initial phases of what is a multi generational effort. The interstate started with eight lonely miles in the middle of rural kansas. It took 10 administrations, 28 sessions of congress to complete, the year by year, we got it down. Like the transcontinental railroad, a century earlier, the interstate system propelled our economy forward and advance the ability mobility means. Now we have to answer the call to tackle the transportation challenges of the new century dealing with congesting, fuel utilization, air quality, and global warming. As i said at the opening, world leading economies do not develop accident nor did they evolve by resting on ones laurels. The case is clear, america cannot afford to sit on the sidelines and not develop a comprehensive Passenger Rail system offering highspeed and higher performing Passenger Rail and a more robust freight rail network. The next generation is counting on us and the time for action is now. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you for those insightful comments. Next, my pleasure to introduce peter. Peter lead the transition to map 21. In fiscal year 2011, they signed more Capital Construction agreements and then in any two year period in the agencys history. I want to thank peter for their active role in helping agencies devastated by super storm outstanding get the funding they needed to recover. Peter and his staff began a handson involvement in making sure the impacted agencies received the assistance they needed during the crisis. They provided the guidance and continuing support in the aftermath needed to get our system is back in service for the people of our region. New Jersey Transit applauded peters leadership and we thank you once again. Please tell me welcome peter to the stage. [applause] good morning. I will echo and welcome to washington on behalf of the president and secretary ray lahood. Weve had opportunities to discuss the role of transit and our economy and our future economic potential. This conference is a legislative conference. This is the moment where we gather to focus on whether the actions in washington are enabling transit to move forward or move backward. We focus on whether todays National Policies are enabling you to provide Quality Service to more americans or fewer americans. Whether we are enabling you to reduce our consumption of foreign oil or continue the progress by which we are highly dependent on the unstable regimes that provide oil to us all over the world. We are focused on whether National Policies are enabling you to transport more americans to work or leave more american sitting at the bus stop. Were focusing especially in the wake of Hurricane Sandy on whether our National Policies are enabling you to respond and recover from national disasters. Seven weeks ago, my son and i stood on the west front of the capital and heard president obamas second inaugural address. In that address, he said the following. No Single Person can build the roads and networks and Research Labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now more than ever we must do these things together as one nation and one people. The key phrase for me in this passage is the word together. This administration cannot achieve these goals without the help of congress. We cannot achieve these goals without you and your advocacy. Last year, many of you remember at the time of the legislative conference, Public Transit was in a battle for its life. The house of representatives was moving forward with plans to strip Public Transit out of the Highway Trust Fund entirely and instead make funding for Public Transit dependent on some of the most controversial legislative proposals put forward, led trilling in the Arctic National wildlife refuge. It was politically cynical and prompted my boss to say that it was the worst piece of legislation he had seen in over 30 years of Public Service. I could not agree with him because i had only done it 24 years in Public Service. [laughter] together, at the Administration Working with you, beat back that proposal. Today, we need your intervention again. Recent congressional actions are threatening to send us backwards. We have made great progress under the president s leadership and making transit a priority, but that progress is facing a real and present threats by congress. I do not need to remind you that president obama has strengthened Public Transit and put it high on his agenda. We have built more than 350 miles of new rail and bus rapid transit. The fta has signed more Grant Agreements to build new extensions. In 20112012, more than in any twoyear period in history. Our new starts and small Start Program has kept people working. We created 88,000 local jobs with the new Start Program. We kept people working for what was the greatest recession since the great depression. We have devised ways of moving those projects forward in a streamlined fashion. We have cut red tape and we have been investing in opportunities to create jobs when we need them on projects that really improves the quality of life for generations. In the sun rail project that we are partners in florida, in orlando, we have it under people working which generated 250 million in related developments, and medical developments, office buildings, retail, housing. Houston metro, theyre building new light rail. We have 700 construction jobs right now out and about 25 million in related Housing Developments along the corridor. Weve had cities that have lost jobs and revenue in a desperate fashion and they are seeing a resurgence for Public Transit investment. Places like allentown, pennsylvania. Kent, ohio, an investment by secretary lahood is resulting in 125 million return on investment on a new hotel and Conference Center and other development in the area. Through these tough economic times, transit has been a real engine, both in getting people to work, people do use transit for the first time when they had to get rid of a car payment. They are discovering the transit works for them and theyre keeping more of their money in their wallets rather than handing it over to the gas pump. Map21 was the culmination of many of the administrations highest transit priorities. Safety was the most important, it is always the most important at the u. S. Department of transportation. Pilaus the land prohibited the fta from issuing the most basic common sense Safety Standards since 1964. The Administration Proposed that it be reversed in 2009. By adding value to the safety of operations without adding a great deal of cost. There were other wins that bore out the administrations policies. When the Administration First proposed the budget that fta had its own emergency relief program, we could never have anticipated the worst transit disaster in history of the United States. Thank heaven map21 put that program on the books because it enabled congress to provide us with 10. 9 billion rapidly and we have awarded 400 million of that amount to age to aid the busiest transit agencies in the United States in response to the greatest transit disaster in the history of the United States. We made progress on state a good repair. We have always said that we can not let our transit agencys deteriorate at a time when demand is rising. We will lose ridership, we will lose our ability to reduce our dependence on foreign oil if the service we provide cannot be reliable and desirable. The Administration Proposed sizable funding increases for new state of Good Repair Program. Did we get those increases . I am afraid not. We did get the new program in place. The president is part of this fix it first initially in its dividend and yet Union Address is proposing to put real investment, real Game Changing increases in funding, to not only maintain, but advance the condition of our Public Transit access assets across the country. I do want to say map21 did not have the right funding levels. Separate from the issue of funding, once it got past that a bitter fight over transit role in the trust fund, there was remarkable unanimity between the house and the senate and the Obama Administration on what the priority should be. That is why we got a new state of Good Repair Program. That is why we got we had been moving forward in implementing a much of the agenda and i will tell you some of the critics of the head and we are encountering have been frustrating. The number one headwind is available resources. We did everything that congress has asked us to do. We are still doing its. We have worked with our partners of the federal Highway Administration in putting out new categorical exclusion is to streamline the environmental process by which transit projects could be advanced. I know it has been a frustration for many of you that investments that were inherently environmentally beneficial because they are transit investments must still go through a very lengthy environmental approval process. Working with our partners of the federal Highway Administration, with their partners on the council on economic quality, we are streamlining that progress. We will be able to but more projects on the streets sooner. The president has what is called the white house dash board where we have projects that require us to work sidebyside with other federal agencies to get them through the environmental process. There are a number of transit project projects, like the red line in baltimore, like the Columbia River crossing between oregon and washington. These projects are moving that much more quickly to a streamlined progress as a result of the present leadership. President s leadership. That has to do with the core issue of resources. We only got a twoyear transportation bill rather than the multiyear funding levels the president proposed. Those two years of funding was largely flat. Coming on top of this, we have faced a sequester. That sequester has taken 656 million out of the federal Transit Administration. What has been the impact . A 5 cut, which pushes the budget back to where we were in 2009 before we had all the added requirements of implementing map21. It means that the furloughs are very real possibility in the future, which breaks my heart i cannot even express. My employers to be facing furloughs of the very time they should be putting out map21 policy guidance to help you do your job. Our new starts and small Start Program has also been caught. Rather than looks like the final funding level could be as much as 17 below the levels sots in the president s budget for this year. We have signed a Record Number of current agreements. We have done what Congress Asked us to do. When the secretary was first nominated to be transportation secretary, he passed along to us that the most common thing he heard about transit going for the confirmation process was that Development Process for new start projects took too long. It was the number one issue i heard about. It was the number one transit issue hereabout through his confirmation process. We have done a lot to streamline the process. As a result, weve been able to advance these projects more quickly. Weve been able to get them to the funding pipeline. Weve been able to sign Grant Agreement and put people to work. What are we facing now . Were facing a funding level some 17 below what the president asked for. The funding level not allow us to honor the commitments we made in each of these Grant Agreements for 2013. It is sure it likely will have to have acrosstheboard cuts against every one of the new start projects currently in construction. What that will mean is higher borrowing costs, make these things more expensive to the taxpayer. It also means that new full funding Grant Agreements that could be on the horizon could be in danger. It is not clear if this were to continue, year after year, that we would be able to advance projects. Weve been encouraging people to move forward, we have streamlined the process, just as Congress Asked us to do. At this career resource level, at the window is rapidly closing. That will undermine our ability to lower our dependence on foreign oil. It will undermine their ability to serve all of those young people taking transit in increasing numbers but it will undermine their ability to limit, if not minimize congestion in a great many cities. We have new battles upon us and we need your advocacy. We need to speak to our representatives. Is the legislative Congress Conference and you come here to washington not just to hear speeches like this one, but to make the case to members of congress. Let me politely suggest this. If at the end of this trip folks calculate their hours and realize they spent more time sitting in a so tell listening to speeches than they have making the case on capitol hill, i think they demonstrated the wrong priority. This message needs to be delivered to our partners on the hill. They need to know what these funding decisions mean for our ability to advance a protransit agenda. President obamas observation in the state of the union about ceos want to locate close to infrastructure developments. The ceo brought hundreds of new jobs to North Carolina set a free upgrade the infrastructure, they will bring even more jobs. My parallel example was in orlando, florida. I was down there recently providing a 78 million grant as part of their new start project to advance the sun rail Commuter Rail line. I was joined by ceo of a Florida Hospital corporation. He pointed out that because of our locating a Commuter Rail stop at the heart of his new health village, he will be bringing thousands of new jobs as part of the Florida Hospital corporation. It will have a dramatic impact, not only on the Economic Development of downtown orlando, it will have very meaningful impacts on congested on interstate 4. He knows that he can locate those people at that campus because they will have immediate Commuter Rail access to the campus and not have to put up with interstate 4. The inevitability about what were dealing with Public Transit, the only issue is whether federal policies will follow a more seamless and helpful course to deal with are inevitable future or not. What of the things we learned in the last census is that our population will grow by 100 Million People by 2015. That population growth is not plan to be spread evenly across the country. It will be concentrated in many of the areas where the population is concentrated now. We can either have policies in place at the federal level that will help us address and plan for that. Or we can let that population growth to overwhelm us. The president has put forward a plan for fixing at first and advancing Public Transit that is fully paid for. He emphasized that in his state of the union. It is fully paid for. For those of you when you deliver this message to congress on the importance of moving forward with a protransit investment agenda, at the present has a plan to do that and is fully paid for. We can only do that with our partners. We need to do this together. We need to do it in a partnership between fta and all of our partners in congress. Please deliver that message. Please spend more time on capitol then you do in this hotel. That will make this a successful visit. Thank you for having me. [applause] we want to open it up to questions from the audience. There are microphones on both sides of the aisle. I think these two gentlemen are ready for any questions you have for them. Hello. I am wondering what we can do to help the reauthorization, restore the 57 cuts in programs. [inaudible] the numbers you are using, all little bit of an apple to orange comparison. What map21 did was somewhat in line with what the Administration Proposed, but other ways three out of line. We did propose the discretionary bus program, an annual grant competition that many of you participated, the substituted for a Formula Program for the state of good repair of our systems. What you also heard me say earlier is that the funding levels for that state of Good Repair Program was hundreds of millions of dollars less than what the Administration Proposed. We proposed to do the consolidation and programs that the congress did, however congress and as the funding level far below what we proposed and as a result, people are not seen our agenda was to provide them a dependable Funding Source they could count on the other than be subject to the vagaries of grant competition where they worked very hard. Some years the win, some years they do not. We want people to have a dependable Funding Source that they could plan on. We got the steady stream of funding, but we got it at an overly inadequate level. And partly, and what can we do with congress to advance that . The president has a fix it first agenda that will involve dramatically increased investments in that state of Good Repair Program. In his state of the union message, he talked about the unfinished parts of the american jobs act. He asked them to adopt the rest. One of the things that was left on the cutting room floor was a sizable confusion of dollars, part of a 50 billion initiative. That would have done a great deal for our bus operators. The issue that has plagued us has been the financial piece. You tease us when you said the president s plan is paid for. When we go on the hill, folks will paying us on the details. Give us the best answer that you can. We would like to make sure it is paid for. We want a credible response. The president proposal has been to capture a portion of this savings from the drawdowns in iraq and afghanistan. It is using a portion of that for deficit reduction, investments at home, investments to rebuild our economy. This was not the way congress wanted to go. At least last year. The need for these investments has not gone away. A compelling need or the jobs we create in construction and secondary jobs we get from investments of this kind has not gone. That is the most direct explanation we can give. I am not here to ask you about funding. For the first time in my career, our legislative acts we appreciate that you have shown up to our meetings. We wanted to make sure that the funding for the Transit Administration and Railroad Administration would be solid and increase. One of the ways to make sure funding does not go out, you challenged us that we would lose the funding. If you lose the funding, and hampers efforts to get the funding out there. We thank you for what you do. Our legislative acts will be that the funding comes for transit and agencies that provide oversight and the funding that could us get through thank you. Thank you. I will speak for joe here for my left as well. We will see. [laughter] we have been pushing the staff hard to advance a streamlined agenda and make these programs more easily accessible to put the investment dollars to work quickly. It is disheartening at a time when you are continuing to push folks to do more with less, to have furloughs, cross come across for the future. We are blessed. Thank heaven we have staff that are motivated by the transit mission. They do not come to work because they are pulling a paycheck but they believe in what we are doing because we have not treated those employees well when we have to talk about furloughs when we are pushing them hard to advance the agenda. I will make an addition to that. Echoing peters comments, one of the most pleasant surprises i have had since i have came to fra was the quality and dedication of the workforce. These people are top shelf. They work hard. They believe in our mission. Going back to a theme that peter carried so well in his speech. It is important that you make your priorities known to the hill. The most important take away that i heard from peter was the tabulation of time. If more of it is spent in a hotel than on the hill with leaders, that would be a failure. The eight miles of interstate highway in kansas were part of a National Plan to develop a highway system. One of the things that makes it challenging on the hill is that there is not a similar kind of plan. Where are we on developing a . Ational rail claiplan i talked about the need to strengthening planning by states and regions. We checked off the list those components that are part of the National Rail planning process. There is a misunderstanding that people think some single document will come out. That is not the case. We have a checklist of the components necessary of a strong rail planning on a national basis. It is about giving the twinkles that states and regions need to better assess what their Transportation Needs are. Understand how rail or transit fit into meeting those needs. We provide our deliverables and continue checking off that list. Could you give us an update on the status of your metro Safety Standards initiative . Let me talk generally about our effort on the new transit safety authority. The most important thing that we are seeking to do is develop commonsense standards that enable transit operators in a scalable fashion. We have said that our Safety Initiative will not be a one sizefitsall approach. We need to recognize the safety challenges faced by a small to midsized bus only operator that is different from a rail operator. If we use the Management System approach, we will scale the right safety focus for each agency, even to identical agencies. They will have different safety vulnerabilities. Two different operators who are aerating rail, onces may be signal challenge. Another one and maybe the knowledge of the people in the community on how to drive cars around light rail. Each system needs to know what their vulnerability is and make sure they focus on it. Our focus will be on trying to add value without adding a great deal of costs. Our safety rules will have to pass costbenefit analysis to get through the process. One of our nearest term focuses is we will be working through the state safety organizations to apply and enforce these new federal standards. We need to do a great deal of work to strengthen those state safety organizations. They are understaffed, without the expertise that is needed and without the Enforcement Authority given to them by the state legislature to have an impact. One of the things we did congress did Something Different and map 21. We wanted to put out federal funds at 100 federal funding for the state safety organizations to bring them to where they need to be. Congress imposed a 8020 cost. Each governor will have to come up with 20 to match the grants i give them. Secretary lahood accent out a letter sent out a letter to tell them to plan for this. I cannot give you four dollars unless you give me one dollar to advances clause 00 to this cost. We will get those dollars out and hope the governors are ready to partner with us. Those eight miles in kansas are still there. Thank god for president eisenhower. You have a new start guided out. That guidance cuts the new small stars out of the picture. Are we misreading that . Was that the intention . We have a project in kansas city, kansas that is underway. Those types of things for small communities we have no rail in kansas. They may not qualify. You are misreading it. I have had a number of advocates for projects like brt read the guidance differently, but importantly this is not something that needs to be left to confusion. It is a comprehensive document. I encourage you to meet with our people. Discuss it. The biggest threat that i see to the availability of funding for new starts is not our guidance. It is the funding constraints. If we receive funding below what we requested the president asked for increased funding for ewe starts program the nw starts program because we needed that funding to accommodate the pipeline we see, one we are advancing quickly at congress and are repressed request. When we go south as a result of these of esther, as a result of the sequester, that is a troubling picture. If you have concerns about the guidance, let us put together a meeting with the staff. I want to understand what you may see as disadvantaging bus rapid transit. You can get a lot of throughput when it is done correctly with little money. If that was a result of our guidance, if you see something that has that impact, we want to know. Thank you, joe. And peter for your partnership in your stewardship and your leadership on behalf of our industry. Please help me find joe and peter please help me think joe and peter again. Joe and peter again